Swimming is so much more than just an essential life skill. It’s an exceptional cardiorespiratory workout that comes without excessive stress on your joints. But if your pool is closed for an indefinite amount of time, you need a way to try to stay in swim shape, so that it’ll be easier to resume your workout regimen when you can get back in the water. Being in swim shape means to have developed valuable physiological adaptations from swimming. In plain English, that means that you’ve got a le

The most remarkable finding in this study, perhaps, is that Schulz and Curnow (1988) found their estimate of the age of gold medalist Olympic swimmers to be “remarkably consistent” over 84 years. They calculated a mean age of 17.7 years for women and 20.6 years for men. This seems to suggest that as “absolute levels of performance” enhanced over this time period, there weren’t effects of aging on physiology that would affect performance outcomes. Rather, Schulz and Curnow suggested that the increases in performance could be attributed to improvements in sports training programs, better equipment, and larger population bases from which to select talent. They found no deviations in age over this time period in “superathletes” coming from other disciplines (track & field, tennis, and baseball), with the exception of golfers.

Neuropsychiatric manifestations represent a core feature of Parkinson disease (PD), from the prediagnostic phase to end-stage disease. Parkinson disease psychosis (PDP) is thought to be a result of an increase in the numbers of 5-HT2A receptors and dopaminergic hyperactivity. However, dopamine agonist (DA) medications like levodopa (L-dopa) that help reduce muscle rigidity and tremors can also trigger psychosis, marked by hallucinations and delusions.

Several agents are currently in development geared at the relief of off-time for patients with Parkinson. Levodopa (L-3,4 Diyhyrozyphenylalanine) is the gold standard therapy in the treatment of Parkinson disease, but its effectiveness decreases with chronic use. As it wears off, patients experience fluctuating and debilitating return of Parkinsonian symptoms, known as off episodes, which can occur for several hours per day. Clinical treatment goals focus on increasing on-time and managin

Huntington disease (HD), a genetically dominant trinucleotide repeat disorder resulting from cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG) repeats within the huntingtin (HTT) gene, has a near-full penetrance and onset of symptomatology and neuronal loss typically by the third decade of life. A neuropathological hallmark of HD is cortical atrophy, as indicated in postmortem assessments. These studies have been limited, however, because the assessments were performed on tissue of neuropathological grades 2-4. Cortical atrophy at early stages of HD, before symptoms develop, remains unclear. There have been few reliable and quantifiable indicators of disease severity, progression, or phenotype, which has limited therapy development. Currently, there are no disease-modifying medications and few interventions available to effectively alleviate symptoms. The lack of indicators of pathobiological processes at the molecular level has limited the ability to prove efficacy and safety in clinical trials.

A phase 3 multi-center, randomized, double-blind, parallel group, active-controlled superiority study assessing oral ponesimod versus teriflunomide (Aubagio) in relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS) (OPTIMUM) is nearing its estimated primary completion date of April 17, 2019.The 1100-patient study, which kicked off in June 2015, is a comparison of the efficacy and safety of once-daily 20 mg ponesimod and 14 mg teriflunomide. The primary outcome measure is annualized relapse rate (ARR) with secondary

Biochemical differences in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) metabolites may distinguish between patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) and secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS), according to a study. The findings show that pyrimidine metabolism not associated with aging in particular may serve as a biomarker to characterize SPMS pathogenesis and indicate potential markers of disease progression.Participants with RRMS (n= 30), SPMS (n= 16), and controls with non-inflammato

The number of competitions in your triathlon season as well as your need to train for three disciplines can make developing a training strategy seem complex, but coming up with the right plan isn’t as difficult as you might think. You need to increase your aerobic capacity for races that require varying levels of endurance, but that’s not your only objective. Perhaps more importantly, you need to physically and mentally prepare for the challenges of each discipline and the unknowns of triathlon

By applying a validated algorithm to multiple sets of administrative health data (AHC), researchers have shown that there has been a steady rise in the prevalence of multiple sclerosis (MS) in the US over the past 5 years to nearly 1 million people. This number is nearly double that of previously reported estimates from prior studies, which had estimated that this population in the US numbered approximately 572,312 (95% CI, 397,004-747,619, and 403,630 individual cases (95% CI 387,445-419,833). Establishing an accurate estimate of MS prevalence in the US is essential for evaluating changes in disease frequency in relation to changing population demographics. “We must understand the reasons behind the growing MS prevalence estimates in the US,” Mitchell Wallin, MD, MPH, Director for The Multiple Sclerosis Centers of Excellence (MSCoE) East at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), told MD Magazine®. “For example, how are the demographic changes in the US influencing the incidence and mortality experience of MS?”

A recently published study shows that modulation of the integrated stress response (ISR) may be an effective neuroprotective therapy for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with Sephin1 treatment. Sephin1 was shown to protect oligodendrocytes, axons, and myelin, which is correlated with a prolonged ISR, as well as reduced central nervous system (CNS) inflammation, in MS mouse models with chronic experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE).The pathological hallmarks of MS are the destruction of

A phase 3 multi-center, randomized, double-blind, parallel group, active-controlled superiority study assessing oral ponesimod versus teriflunomide (Aubagio) in relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS) (OPTIMUM) is nearing its estimated primary completion date of April 17, 2019. The 1100-patient study, which kicked off in June 2015, is a comparison of the efficacy and safety of once-daily 20 mg ponesimod and 14 mg teriflunomide. The primary outcome measure is annualized relapse rate (ARR) wit

Several epidemiological studies have sought to determine correlations between ambient air pollution and development of childhood asthma. Regional concentrations of environmental pollutants have been shown to have a statistically significant effect on childhood asthma morbidity.1 The most recently-published US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show that asthma-related concerns accounted for 6.2% of all-age patient visits to office-based physicians, and 1.7 million visits to emergency departments in 2015. Mortality rates due to asthma were 3,615, about 1.1 deaths per 100,000 that year.